Racial Justice Act repealed

By Jessika Morgan / Staff Writer

Published: Saturday, June 22, 2013 at 07:55 PM.

A North Carolina death row inmate hasn’t been executed since 2006, due to the state’s Racial Justice Act of 2009. With Gov. Pat McCrory’s signature to repeal the legislation Wednesday, North Carolina executions may restart. Reports claim McCrory agreed to sign because the act eliminated the state’s capital punishment. Convicted inmates could challenge their death sentences on the grounds of racial bias under the act. Nearly all of the state’s 161 death-row inmates filed appeals under the law. A Lenoir County man is on death row for killing two people over allegedly robbing him. Terrence Bowman, now 42, was convicted of first-degree murder in February of 1997 and sentenced to two separate death penalties, well before the Racial Justice Act was enacted. Bowman, a black man, contended that African-Americans in the trial court jury pool were underrepresented. He provided data to claim there was a “16.17 percent absolute disparity between the percentage of African-Americans in the general population and their percentage in the venire,” according to the case obtained by The Free Press. In The State of North Carolina v. Terrence Dion Bowman, the state disagreed with his calculations. The court determined blacks accounted for 24.2 percent of the jury pool, therefore creating a 14.8 percent disparity. The jury could not conclude the disparity percentage unfair or unreasonable, with the most recent census during the time indicating Lenoir County’s population was nearly 40 percent black. Bowman used the Duren Test, a three-part test to determine disproportionate representation of a defendant’s race, to fight his claim. Bowman lost at all court levels, with the case not being picked up by the U.S. Supreme Court, and is currently on death row. Although the appeals process is over for Bowman, the case is not closed. He is in a post-conviction relief phase through filing for a Motion of Appropriate Relief, which has to be heard in Lenoir County. A representative from the local district attorney’s office with knowledge about the case said it’s too early to determine how the repeal will affect this case, if at all. The Attorney’s General office will decide once it’s clear how the appeal will be applied to North Carolina death penalty cases. The Associated Press reported Republicans said the Racial Justice Act was “poorly crafted,” while Democrats argued evidence has proved racially biased juries. “The policy implementation of the law was seriously flawed,” McCrory said in the report. “Nearly every person on death row, regardless of race, has appealed their death sentence under the Racial Justice Act. The state’s district attorneys are nearly unanimous in their bipartisan conclusion that the Racial Justice Act created a judicial loophole to avoid the death penalty and not the path of justice.” With 161 total death row inmates in North Carolina as of January this year, there are 83 blacks, 62 whites, four Latinos, eight Native Americans and one Asian, according to deathpenaltyinfo.org.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. Jessika Morgan can be reached at 252-559-1078 or at Jessika.Morgan@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessikaMorgan.

Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published
without permission. Links are encouraged.

A North Carolina death row inmate hasn’t been executed since 2006, due to the state’s Racial Justice Act of 2009.
With Gov. Pat McCrory’s signature to repeal the legislation Wednesday, North Carolina executions may restart. Reports claim McCrory agreed to sign because the act eliminated the state’s capital punishment.
Convicted inmates could challenge their death sentences on the grounds of racial bias under the act. Nearly all of the state’s 161 death-row inmates filed appeals under the law.
A Lenoir County man is on death row for killing two people over allegedly robbing him. Terrence Bowman, now 42, was convicted of first-degree murder in February of 1997 and sentenced to two separate death penalties, well before the Racial Justice Act was enacted.
Bowman, a black man, contended that African-Americans in the trial court jury pool were underrepresented. He provided data to claim there was a “16.17 percent absolute disparity between the percentage of African-Americans in the general population and their percentage in the venire,” according to the case obtained by The Free Press.
In The State of North Carolina v. Terrence Dion Bowman, the state disagreed with his calculations. The court determined blacks accounted for 24.2 percent of the jury pool, therefore creating a 14.8 percent disparity.
The jury could not conclude the disparity percentage unfair or unreasonable, with the most recent census during the time indicating Lenoir County’s population was nearly 40 percent black. Bowman used the Duren Test, a three-part test to determine disproportionate representation of a defendant’s race, to fight his claim.
Bowman lost at all court levels, with the case not being picked up by the U.S. Supreme Court, and is currently on death row. Although the appeals process is over for Bowman, the case is not closed. He is in a post-conviction relief phase through filing for a Motion of Appropriate Relief, which has to be heard in Lenoir County.
A representative from the local district attorney’s office with knowledge about the case said it’s too early to determine how the repeal will affect this case, if at all. The Attorney’s General office will decide once it’s clear how the appeal will be applied to North Carolina death penalty cases.
The Associated Press reported Republicans said the Racial Justice Act was “poorly crafted,” while Democrats argued evidence has proved racially biased juries.
“The policy implementation of the law was seriously flawed,” McCrory said in the report. “Nearly every person on death row, regardless of race, has appealed their death sentence under the Racial Justice Act. The state’s district attorneys are nearly unanimous in their bipartisan conclusion that the Racial Justice Act created a judicial loophole to avoid the death penalty and not the path of justice.”
With 161 total death row inmates in North Carolina as of January this year, there are 83 blacks, 62 whites, four Latinos, eight Native Americans and one Asian, according to deathpenaltyinfo.org.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. Jessika Morgan can be reached at 252-559-1078 or at Jessika.Morgan@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @JessikaMorgan.